The title of this blog comes from a Gaelic expression -"putting on the poor mouth"-which means to exaggerate the direness of one's situation in order to gain time or favour from creditors.

14 July 2010

Spending Challenge website given the respect it deserves

I would imagine that many people imagined what sort of response that George Osborne’s would get when he heralded his great idea of asking the general public for their great ideas for making big savings on government spending. I would guess that the image was of something that provided an outlet for the beady-eyed ranter that usually populates the comment sections of the Daily Mail and for those who send contributions into the Viz top tips column (Not that I'm slagging the Viz Top Tips column given that I used one of the suggestions for a post only a week or so ago)

To be honest I had no wish to look at the spending challenge website but it seems that some of the suggestions are quite funny (and very silly too!). Thanks to Freemania for drawing my attention:

Millions of pounds are wasted each year by civil servants unnecessarily going to the toilet because they drunk too much fluid. if each civil servant is drinking 1000 ml too much then the bladder is only 250 ml so that's 4 times a day too many times going to the toilet. each toilet trip takes an average of 5 minutes including hand-washing and drying plus walking to and from the desk makes it 20 minutes per public sector employee of which there are 6 million so that's 120 million minutes or 2 million hours per day with each worker earning 15 pounds an hour average that's 30 million pounds a day or 11 billion pounds per year that could be saved.

How the idea could be implemented

ban tea cups over 150 ml and have fluid monitors to fine anyone who drinks too much £10 per 100 ml each day out of their pay.

About Me

Born Bonaparte O'Coonassa in Corkadoragha where the the torrential rains are more torrential, the squalor more squalid, the hopelessness more utterly hopeless than they are anywhere else. Actually I'm Shaun Downey and I live in Romford which is probably worse (Romford, that is, not my name!)